by J. R. Ward
With each pass of the linen, the scent of the herbs hit her nose anew until she felt like she couldn’t breathe.
Or maybe it wasn’t the smell in the air; it was more the thoughts in her head. Had he been her future? Would she have known his body? Could this have been her hellren and the father of her young?
Questions that would never be answered.
Ehlena frowned. No, actually, they had all been answered.
Each one of them with a no.
As she handed another roll to the race’s physician, she wondered whether Stephan had lived a full, satisfying life.
No, she thought. He’d been gypped. Totally gypped.
Cheated.
The face was the last to get covered, and she held up Stephan’s head as the doctor slowly wound the linen around and around. Ehlena’s breath was hard in coming, and just as Havers covered the eyes, one tear left her own and landed on the white wrap.
Havers put his hand on her shoulder briefly and then finished the job.
The salt in the fibers of the linen worked as a sealant so no fluids seeped through the weave, and the mineral also preserved the body for entombment. The herbs served an obvious function in the short term to mask any odor, but they were also emblematic of the fruits of the earth and cycles of growth and death.
With a curse, she went back to the closet and retrieved a black shroud, which she and Havers used to wrap Stephan up. The outer black was to symbolize the corruptible mortal flesh, the inner white the soul’s purity and incandescence within its eternal home in the Fade.
Ehlena had once heard that rituals served important purposes beyond the practical. They were supposed to aid in psychological healing, but standing over Stephan’s dead body she felt as if that were such bullshit. This was a false closure, a pathetic attempt to contain the exigencies of cruel fate with sweet-smelling cloth.
Nothing but a fresh slipcover over a bloodstained couch.
They stood for a moment of silence at Stephan’s head and then pushed the gurney out the back of the morgue and into the tunnel system that ran underground to the garages. There, they put Stephan into one of the four ambulances that were made up to look exactly like the ones humans used.
“I’ll drive them both to his parents’ home,” she said.
“Do you need to be accompanied?”
“I think Alix would do better without any more of an audience.”
“You will be of care, though? Not just with them, but your own safety?”
“Yes.” Each of the ambulances had a pistol under the driver’s seat, and as soon as Ehlena had started working at the clinic, Catya had shown her how to shoot: Without a doubt, she could handle whatever came her way.
As she and Havers shut the ambulance’s double doors, Ehlena glanced at the tunnel entrance. “I think I’m going to go back to the clinic across the parking lot. I need the air.”
Havers nodded. “And I shall do the same. I find I need the air as well.”
Together they walked out into the cold, clear night.
Like the good whore he was, Rehv did everything he was asked to do. The fact that he was rough and unkind was a concession to his free will—and again, part of the reason the princess liked their business.
When it was all over and they were both spent—she from having orgasmed so much, he because the scorpion venom was deep in his bloodstream—those fucking rubies remained where he’d thrown them. On the floor.
The princess was sprawled against the windowsill, panting hard, her three-knuckled fingers splayed, likely because she knew they creeped him out. He was across the cabin, as far as he could get from her, weaving on his two feet.
As he tried to breathe, he hated the way the cabin air smelled of dirty sex. Likewise, her scent was all over him, coating him, suffocating him such that even with the symphath blood in his veins, he felt like throwing up. Or maybe that was the venom. Who the fuck knew.
One of her bony hands lifted and pointed to the velvet bag. “Pick. Them. Up.”
Rehv’s eyes locked on hers, and he shook his head back and forth slowly.
“Better get back to our uncle,” he said in a rasp. “I’m willing to bet if you’re gone too long he gets suspicious.”
He had her on that one. Their father’s brother was a calculating, suspicious sociopath. Just like the two of them.
All in the family, as they said.
The princess’s robes lifted from the floor and floated over to her, and as they hung in the air beside her, she took a wide red sash out of an inner pocket. Slipping it between her legs, she bound up her sex, keeping what he’d left behind inside of her. Then she clothed herself, covering up the half of the robe he’d torn by making it wrap under the top layer. The gold—or at least he assumed it was gold, given the way it reflected light—belt was next.
“Send my uncle my regards,” Rehv drawled. “Or…not.”
“Pick…them…up.”
“You’re either bending over to get that bag, or you’re leaving it behind.”
The princess’s eyes flashed with the kind of nastiness that made murderers so much fun to spar with, and they glared at each other for long, hostile minutes.
The princess cracked. Just as he’d said she would.
To his ever-loving satisfaction, she was the one who did the retrieving, and her capitulation nearly made him come again, that barb of his threatening to engage even though there was nothing for it to lock in against.
“You could be king,” she said, holding out her hand, the velvet bag with the rubies lifting from the floor. “Kill him and you could be king.”
“Kill you and I could be happy.”
“You will never be happy. You are a breed apart, living a lie among inferiors.” She smiled, true joy reflecting in her face. “Except here with me. Here, you can be honest. Until next month, my love.”
She blew him a kiss with her hideous hands and dematerialized, dissipating in the manner his breath had outside the cabin, eaten up by the thin night air.
Rehv’s knees gave out and he collapsed to the floor, landing in a heap of bones. Lying on the rough-hewn planks, he felt everything: the twitching muscles of his thighs, the tickle at the tip of his cock as his foreskin eased back into place, the compulsive swallows which were caused by the scorpion venom.
As the warmth in the cabin leached out, nausea rolled into him on a fetid, oily tide, his stomach curling into a fist, a whole lot of we’re-outta-here tightening up his throat. His gag reflex followed orders and he popped open his mouth, but nothing came out.
He knew better than to eat before he had a date.
Trez came through the door so quietly that it wasn’t until the guy’s boots were in front of Rehv’s face that he noticed his best friend was with him.
The Moor’s voice was gentle. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Rehv waited for a break in the heaving to try to push himself up off the floor. “Let me…get dressed.”
The scorpion poison was barreling through his central nervous system, jamming up his neuro-highways and-byways, making it so that dragging his body over to his clothes involved an embarrassing display of weakness. The trouble was, the antivenin had to stay in the car, because the princess would have found it, and showing a core weakness like that was like handing over your loaded weapon to the enemy.
Trez clearly lost patience with the show, because he went over and picked up the coat. “Just put this on so we can get you treated.”
“I…get dressed.” It was whore’s pride.
Trez cursed and knelt down with the coat. “For fuck’s sake, Rehv—”
“No—” Wild wheezing cut him off and took him flat on the floor, giving him a quick close-up of the knots in the pine boards.
Man, it was bad tonight. The worst it had ever been.
“Sorry, Rehv, but I’m taking over.”
Trez ignored his pathetic attempts to fend off help, and after the sable was wrapped around him, his friend picked him up an
d carried him out like a broken piece of equipment.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Trez said as his long legs took them quickly to the Bentley.
“Watch…me.”
To keep him and Xhex alive and out in the free world, he had to.
NINETEEN
Rehv woke up in his bedroom in the Adirondack Great Camp he used as a safe house. He could tell where he was by the floor-to-ceiling windows, the cheery fire across the way, and the fact that the footboard on the bed had putti carved in the mahogany. What he wasn’t clear on was how many hours had passed since his date with the princess. One? A hundred?
Across the dim room, Trez was sitting in an oxblood club chair, reading in the dim yellow light of a goosenecked lamp.
Rehv cleared his throat. “What book is that?”
The Moor looked up, his almond-shaped eyes focusing with a sharpness Rehv could have done without. “You’re awake.”
“What book?”
“It’s The Shadow Death Lexicon.”
“Light reading. And here I thought you were a Candace Bushnell fan.”
“How’re you feeling?”
“Fine. Great. Perky as shit.” Rehv grunted as he pushed himself up higher on the pillows. In spite of his sable coat, which was wrapped around his naked body, and the quilts and throw blankets and down comforters on top of him, he was still cold as a penguin’s ass, so Trez had obviously hit him with a lot of dopamine. But at least the antivenin had worked, so the wheezing and shortness of breath were gone.
Trez slowly closed the ancient book’s cover. “I’m just getting ready, s’all.”
“For going into the priesthood? I thought the whole king thing was up your alley.”
The Moor put the tome on the low table next to him and rose to his full height. After a full-body stretch, he came over to the bed. “You want food?”
“Yeah. That’d be good.”
“Gimme fifteen.”
As the door shut behind the guy, Rehv fished around and found the sable’s inside pocket. When he took out his phone and checked, there were no messages. No texts.
Ehlena hadn’t reached out and touched him. But then, why would she have?
He stared at the phone and traced the keyboard with his thumb. He had a striking hunger to hear her voice, as if the sound of her could wipe away everything that had happened in that cabin.
As if she could wipe away the past two and a half decades.
Rehv went into his contacts and fired up her number on the screen. She was probably at work, but if he left a message, maybe she’d call him on her break. He hesitated, but then hit send and put the phone up to his ear.
The instant he heard ringing, he got a vivid, vile image of him having sex with the princess, his hips pounding away, the moonlight casting obscene shadows on rough floorboards.
He ended the call on a quick punch, feeling as if his body were coated in shit lotion.
God, there were not enough showers in the world for him to be clean enough to talk to Ehlena. Not enough soap or bleach or steel wool. As he pictured her in her pristine nurse’s uniform, her strawberry blond hair back in a neat ponytail, her white shoes unscuffed, he knew that if he ever touched her he’d stain her for life.
With his numb thumb, he stroked the flat screen of the phone, as if it were her cheek, then let his hand fall down onto the bed. The sight of the brilliant red veins of his arm reminded him of a couple more things he’d done with the princess.
He’d never thought of his body as any particular gift. It was big and muscular, so it was useful, and the opposite sex liked it, which meant it was an asset of sorts. And it functioned all right…well, except for the side effects it kicked out from the dopamine and the allergy to scorpion venom.
But really, who was counting.
Lying in his bed in the near-dark, with his phone in his hand, he saw more hideous scenes of his time with the princess…her blowing him, him bending her over and fucking her from behind, his mouth working between her thighs. He remembered what it felt like when his cock’s barb engaged and the two of them were locked together.
Then he thought of Ehlena taking his blood pressure…and how she’d stepped away from him.
She was right to do that.
He was wrong to call her.
With deliberate care, he moved his thumb around the buttons and accessed her contact information. He didn’t pause as he erased her out of his phone, and as she disappeared, an unexpected warmth filled his chest—and told him that according to his mother’s side, he’d done the right thing.
He would ask for another nurse the next time he went to the clinic. And, if he saw Ehlena again, he would leave her alone.
Trez came in with a tray of oatmeal, some tea, and some dry toast.
“Yum,” Rehv said without enthusiasm.
“Be a good boy and finish that. Next meal I’ll bring you bacon and eggs.”
As the tray was settled over his legs, Rehv tossed the phone on the fur and picked up a spoon. Abruptly, and for absolutely, positively no reason at all, he said, “You ever been in love, Trez?”
“Nah.” The Moor returned to his chair in the corner, the curved lamp illuminating his handsome, dark face. “I watched iAm give it a try and decided it wasn’t for me.”
“iAm? Get the fuck out. I didn’t know your brother ever had a chippie.”
“He doesn’t talk about her, and I never met her. But he was miserable for a while in the way only a female can make a guy.”
Rehv swirled around the brown sugar that was sprinkled on the top of his oatmeal. “You think you’ll ever get mated?”
“Nope.” Trez smiled, his perfect white teeth flashing. “Why the questions?”
Rehv brought the spoon to his mouth and ate. “No reason.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“This oatmeal’s fantastic.”
“You hate oatmeal.”
Rehv laughed a little and kept on eating to shut himself up, thinking the subject of love was none of his business. But work sure as hell was.
“Anything happening at the clubs?” he asked.
“Smoothing sailing so far.”
“Good.”
Rehv slowly polished off the Quaker Oats, wondering to himself why, if everything was going fine and dandy down in Caldwell, he had a sinking feeling in his gut.
Probably the oatmeal, he thought. “You told Xhex I was okay, right?”
“Yeah,” Trez said, picking up the book he’d been reading. “I lied.”
Xhex sat behind her desk and stared up at two of her best bouncers, Big Rob and Silent Tom. They were humans, but they were smart, and in their low-hanging jeans, they gave off the perfect, deceptively laid-back vibe she was looking for.
“What can we do for you, boss?” Big Rob asked.
Leaning forward in her chair, she took out ten folded bills from the back pocket of her leathers. She was deliberate in revealing them, splitting them into two piles, and sliding them toward the men.
“I need you to do some off-the-books work.”
Their nods were as fast as their hands on those Benjis. “Anything you like,” Big Rob said.
“Back over the summer, we had a bartender who we fired for skimming. Guy named Grady. You remember him—”
“I saw that shit about Chrissy in the paper.”
“Fucking bastard,” Silent Tom chimed in for once.
Xhex was not surprised they knew the whole story. “I want you to find Grady.” As Big Rob started cracking his knuckles, she shook her head. “Nope. The only thing you do is get me an address. If he sees you, you nod and walk it off. We clear? You do not so much as brush his sleeve.”
Both of them smiled grimly. “No problem, boss,” Big Rob murmured. “We’ll save him for you.”
“The CPD is looking for him as well.”
“Bet they are.”
“We don’t want the police to know what you’re doing.”
“No problem.”
“I’
ll take care of getting your shifts covered. Faster you find him, the happier I’ll be.”
Big Rob looked over at Silent Tom. After a moment, they took the bills she’d given them out of their pockets and slid them back across the table.
“We’ll do right by Chrissy, boss. Don’t you worry.”
“With you guys on it, I won’t.”
The door closed behind them, and Xhex ran her palms up and down her thighs, forcing the cilices on her legs to go deeper into her flesh. She was burning with the need to get out there herself, but with Rehv up north and the deals that were going to be made tonight, she couldn’t leave the club. Just as important, she couldn’t do the legwork on Grady herself. That homicide detective was going to be watching her.
Shifting her eyes to the phone, she wanted to curse. Trez had called earlier to let her know that Rehv had made it through his business with the princess, and the sound of the Moor’s voice had told her what his actual words had not: Rehv’s body wasn’t up for much more of the torture.
Yet another situation she was forced to ride out, sitting on her ass, waiting.
Powerless was not a state that worked for her, but when it came to the princess, she was used to feeling impotent. Way back over twenty years ago, when Xhex’s choices had put them in this situation, Rehv had told her he would take care of things on one condition: She let him handle it his way without interfering. He’d made her swear to stay away, and though it killed her, she’d kept the promise and lived in the reality that Rehv had been forced into that bitch’s hands because of her.
Goddamn it, she wished he’d lose it and lash out at her. Just once. Instead, he kept on putting up with it, paying her debt with his body.
She’d turned him into a whore.
Xhex left her office because she couldn’t stand to spend any more time with herself, and out in the club she prayed for a skirmish in the general pop, like a love triangle imploding, where one guy bitch-slapped another over a chick with fish lips and plastic tits. Or maybe a bathroom tryst gone sour in the men’s room on the mezzanine floor. Shit, she was so desperate she’d even take a drunk getting pissy about his Patrón or some deep corner grind that crossed the line into penetration.